Boutique Countries

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so the went on.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 

Short post alert!  Normally I try to combine countries to limit how many times I post, but I suspect Switzerland and Liechtenstein will be so different from Germany and Denmark that I decided to simplify. I have officially decided to call these two countries “Boutique Countries” as I continually felt like I should not touch anything and that I probably should have brushed my hair.

I arrived in Zurich late and in a deep fog so the best I could do was find a grocery store and my airbnb.  I awoke the next day and sat out to explore.  Zurich is quite beautiful and very clean.  Like sterile clean.  Not only was there no garbage, there were no homeless or beggars on the street.  It felt a bit like walking through a movie set.  It was almost as if they designed one massive movie set and called it a city.  And every shop was a boutique.  Sadly, I did not have half a million Swiss francs to buy a new watch.  I can’t possibly fathom that kind of wealth.  Needless to say, I cooked all of my food at the house!

Turns out there isn’t much to do in Zurich so I spent the whole day walking.  I visited the Old Town (shopping), Lake Zurich (shopping) and the train station (you guessed it, shopping).  Fortunately, the city is beautiful so it was a lovely 11 mile walk.

The next day was a trip to Liechtenstein to cross another micro country off of my list.  I hopped on a tourist bus and headed east.  First stop was a cute little town called Rapperswil.  Well what do you know…another boutique town.  Granted, it was cute so I didn’t mind walking about for a bit.  Here I found the McDonald’s menu where a small value meal started at $12 USD!

After a few hours, we arrived in Liechtenstein.  This is the fourth smallest country in Europe and the sixth smallest in the world.  There are 37,000 residents.  The head of state is a Prince who lives in a castle that overlooks the capital of Vaduz.  It has one of the highest GDPs in the world.  We stopped here for an afternoon of……shopping.  Seriously, if I ever see another Rolex or Hublot store, I might go mad!

And so ended the Boutique Country portion of my trip.  Off to Berlin for a few days where I hope to find a reasonably priced cup of coffee.